Essays

Negative Pressure

A memoir-y meditation on the push and pull of laboratory spaces

Oct 25 •

When feeding the world gets morally murky

The scientific savior complex and Vavilov's seed bank

Oct 7 •

The risky business of tool development in biological research

A cautionary tale

Sep 16 •

I like big risks and I cannot lie

First in a series of posts inspired by "Rationalizing Risk Aversion in Science"

Sep 2 •

Zooming to Sonder

How online teaching helped me see my students

Jul 31 •

How the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to my departure from academia, part 1

It helped me quit in all the ways you think it did . . . but in other ways as well

Jul 8 •

Fact-checking my scientific origin story

My contribution to the 2024 Atheneum Fellows Reading

Jun 3 •

Control the narrative!

Who gets to decide what we talk about when we talk about plants?

May 28 •

Performing a Post-Academic Career

It’s not about how it looks, it’s about how it feels. But what if I can't stop feeling bad about how it looks?

Apr 22 •

The hero at the end of the book

On the Stories Scientists Tell, Ursula Le Guin, and the Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction

Jan 14 •

Why study plants?

Let us count the ways 🌱🧪💚

Nov 13, 2023 •

What is the "end" of biological research?

One of the questions that brought an end to my time as a professor

Oct 30, 2023 •

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